Tale from The 29th
by Imperial Fiction
Summary: The year is 1944. The Nazi war machine is steadily tightening its noose around Europe. Now, step behind the rifle as you follow the tale of a soldier that landed with the US 29th Infantry on the infamous Omaha Beach. Oneshot. Read and Review, please.


**Author's Note: I would like to say that this is my first attempt at making a historical fan fiction. Any likelinesses to WW II soldiers, living or dead, is a mere coincidence. I would also like to day that I have nothing but great respect for all of the brave men who fought in WW II and that WW II is my favorite era in history to study. Thank you for reading this message.****

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**Tale of the 29th**

_"Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country." -General George S. Patton, Jr. (June, 1944)_

The waves crashing against the Higgins Boat was starting to make him nauseous. The bombs going off with in spitting range of them didn't exactly bother him and neither did the seawater the resulting explosions blew into his eyes. The German Bandits that flew overhead duking it out with US P-51 Mustangs just provided a little distraction to him. Not even the Allies' battleships that were blasting at the bunker from afar but still close enough to him that it made his ears ring everytime, those didn't even bother him. No, it was those damn waves. Hell, even the human yet demonically terrifying screams that made Private Rivers, who was sitting next to him with his Thompson cradled tightly like a child's Teddy bear, want to wet his pants, not even that bothered him. That was when the severed arm fell into his lap. 

Private Peter "Pete" Nichols felt the vomit collect in the back of his throat as he jumped up from his seat, screaming in terror. Though the other men in the Higgins were just as scared as Pete, they laughed at their fellow soldiers reaction. Even Captain Collins, uptight bastard as he is, cracked a smile at his private who was now vomitting into the sea.

The somewhat upbeat mood was killed --maybe an inappropriate term for the moment, but they were in a war, so who the Hell cared?-- by another shell of Kraut artillery that landed too close for comfort, causing every one of the 36 soldiers in the boat to duck. Seconds past and Pete could just barely hear the sound of MG42 fire. Knowing he probably risked getting his head blown off, he peeked qucikly and ducked back down, grasping his M1 Garand even tighter. Though they were still pretty far away, he could still see the faint outlines of bunkers built on cliffs. That meant that Jerry will have one Hell of a time picking off Yank after Yank as they tried to get their asses across the beach with their head still attatched to most of their body.

Cpt. Collins then took the time to give a little pep rally. "Boys, I ain't gonna' lie to ya'. More likely than not, most of you are gonna' die. Most of you will be meetin' St. Peter and when you see him, I want you to truthfully tell him that you were a part of the biggest sea-borne invasion ever! I want you to tell him that you died for your country and, if you're real lucky, that you were able to make some of the other bastards die for his." There were small grunts and hoots, but who would expect a standing ovation anyways from a group that had just been told that they were gonna' die? An uncomfortable silence set across the boat.

"Hey, anyone want to hear a joke?" asked Private Charleston, the joker of the platoon. Well, in his eyes anyways; the best he could ever come up with were knock-knock jokes and puns.

Cpt. Collins glared at Charleston. "Boy, if you make one more joke about Krauts 'n' lightbulbs, the next joke is gonna' be coming from me: how many ass-kickings does it take for a private to shut the Hell up?"

An awkward silence, assuming you forgot all about the explosions and what-not, swept over the boat. "Alright, so a Kraut, a Brit, and a Frenchy walk into a bar right?"

"Shut... the Hell... up!"

Then came what almost everyone hoped they wouldn't have to hear any time soon. "Thirty seconds!" yelled the Higgins driver as the sound of MG42s and artillery fire became too loud to ignore.

A forboding thought crossed the minds of all of the soldiers in the boat. Thirty seconds. In thirty seconds, fate would decide whether or not they'd live to see another day. Pete looked up again and saw how close they were getting to the beach head and how Hellish the entire thing was. The soldiers that had already landed on the beach, whether they were the first of the seaborne invasions or the unfortunate bastards from the 101st Airborne who had gone in first, were getting cut down left and right, although some were fortunate enough to make it to cover behind some iron crosses Jerry had put there for whatever reason.

Thirty seconds had passed and the boat made hard contact with the beach. "29, let's go!" yelled Cpt. Collins. No sooner had the door of the Higgins dropped for the soldiers to charge off did a flurry of lead, courtesy of Jerry, pick off five of the front most soldiers. Was Pete ever glad that he had decided to sit in the back today. As what was left of his platoon charged off the Higgins boat, Pete and Charleston sprinted for the nearest beach obstacle. They had to dive in order to avoid the burst of machine gun fire headed their way, kicking up dirt and ending the life of the two soldiers that had tried to follow them.

Pete looked over at Charleston whose face was struck with fear as his knucles grew even whiter as he tightened his grip on his M1 Garand. Pete then looked the other way to see another pair of soldiers try to scramble from their cover to an obstacle higher up the beach. They were cut short by an artillery strike that landed right on top of them. When the sand settled, all that was left were bloody limbs and a smoky crater.

Pete gulped and look at Charleston who said, "Well, better dead up the beach then dead by the water, let's go!" Charleston ran forward followed by Pete, machine gun fire strafing them as they ran sideways up the beach to another obstacle. Though their gear slowed them down quite a bit, their fear of getting turned into Swiss cheese urged them to run as fast humanly possible and then some. Once they reached their new cover, Pete looked around the obstacle and saw that if they could go up two more obstacles, they could make it all the way to the barbed wire-covered seawall. Just as he was about to run up to the next obstacle, a rain of machine gun fire forced him to keep his head down unless he wanted to lose it. He and Charleston then burst from the cover of the beach obstacle and ducked as the tell-tale whistling of falling artillery shells grew louder and the resulting explosion that landed behind them forced them forward into the obstacle. The private that had tried to follow them wasn't so lucky.

More artillery fire came down around them, sometimes kicking up dust, other times shooting up soldiers, or rather, what was left of them. The duo gave one last push and ran to the obstacle as fast as they could. However, an artillery shell that landed relatively close to Pete knocked him off his feet and forced his face into a crater created by a previous artillery strike. Pete lifted his head and was horrified to meet the blank stare of what was left of Private Rivers who seemed to have been the victim of an indirect artillery strike judging on how parts of his skin was charred while other parts was burned to the bone along with the mangled heap his body lay in. That image was just what Pete needed to scramble out of the crater and run all the way up to the seawall, not even bothering with the obstacle Charleston had taken cover behind with another soldier who was attempting to lay down a bit of suppresive fire with his Thompson. The soldier's act of desperate fear and what some would call bravery cost him his head which an MG42 had blasted off, knocking his corpse a few feet back as well. Meanwhile, Pete's mad dash to safety almost killed him as well if it wasn't for his helmet which an MG42 had blasted off. He waited for the gun to train its sights onto another unlucky target until he grabbed his helmet which had fallen a few feet behind him and scrambling to the wall.

There, he was glad to see that among the twelve men that had made it to the seawall, two of them engineers and one a medic, that Cpt. Collins and Pvt. Charleston had made it.

"Alright!" Cpt. Collins roared over the constant machine gun fire. "Someone, blow a hole in that wall so we can get through!" The engineers complied, set their charges, and ran off in terror, one of them forgetting to keep his head down and had it blown off by one of the Kraut's manning the machine guns. All along the seawall he saw that other engineers were doing the same for the groups of soldiers gathered around them. "29 let's go!" Like one long monster, all of the surviving soldiers charged through the seawall, but their war cry was cut short and replaced with screams of pain and terror as men began stepping on land mines, sending sand and blood everywhere.

Pete ran blindly into the minefield, praying to God that he would miss a mine entirely and make it out alive to give the assholes who had planned this stupid invasion a piece of his mind and all of his fist. An explosion in front of him caught his attention. A soldier that had been directly in front of him had stepped onto a land mine. Had the soldier not been there, Pete would have been the goner. Pete prayed silently for the man as he kept running. By the time he had reached "Amen," he had made it past the minefield.

His back against the cliff that the pillboxes were built upon, he could hear the deafening roar of MG42s firing upon the soldiers that had not yet made it up the beach. All of the soldiers that had managed to make it passed the minefield watched in horror as an artillery shell landed on top of a Higgins boat that had just barely made it to the beach, sending its crew all across the beach, some in pieces.

Pete looked over to a private who was at the very end of the cliff. Straight ahead from the edge of the fortification was a trench where a Flak 88 was making mince meat out of everything that moved. Unfortunately for the private, he had stuck his head out too far and got a bullet through the head from a sniper because of it.

The next private in line of the fallen soldier peered just slightly around the corner of the fortification and fired blindly at where he though the sniper was with his Thompson, pulling away just in time as a bullet whizzed past him. The private tried this again and was met with the barely audible sound of a body plummeting from a high position. Cpt. Collins moved up and ordered the two soldiers closest to the end of the wall, "You two, get ready to charge to that bunker! We need to take out that Flak 88 so we can get some reinforcements onto the beach!" Out of the corner of Pete's eye, he saw a P-51with a Bandit on its six fly over the bunker, its tail trailing fire.

The two privates Cpt. Collins had addressed looked at each other before gulping nervously. The two then burst from their cover and into the stretch of beach leading up to the bunker. A ghastly fate met them as both soldiers stepped onto land mines that Jerry had put up. "Great!" cried the soldier next to him. "They've got another mine field!"

"Can it!" Cpt. Collins roared at the soldier. Then he pointed at the soldier who had spoken out and the soldier right in front of Pete. "You two, you're up next!"

"Hell no!" the soldier that had spoken up yelled. "Forget this, I'm outta' here!" Forgetting where he was, the tried to run back to the seawall where he met his end at the hands of a land mine.

"Dumbass," Pete heard Charleston mutter from behind him.

Cpt. Collins pointed at Pete. "Alright, Nichols, go with Stevenson!" Pete nodded reluctantly as he lined up right next to Pvt. Stevenson. At the captain's order, the two bolted onto the mine field, praying that they would make it through. Pete looked up at the cliff where the sniper was supposed to be. Thankfully, the private that had tried to kill the sniping Jerry had succeeded. Pete then focused his attention on making it out of the mine field alive. Up ahead, in the trench, Pete could see a Kraut with an MP40 in hand that had yet to notice him or Stevenson. Lifting his M1 to his shoulder as he ran, he squeezed off a wild shot that connected with the Nazi's stalhem. Shocked, the German fell on his back, just so Stevenson could finish him off with a three-round burst from his Thompson. The small victory was short-lived, however as another Nazi popped out from the cover a wall of the trench had given him and fired at Stevenson with his Kar98K. Stevenson went down with a bullet to the chest and his forward momentum carried him forward until he fell into the trench dead. While the Kraut cocked the bolt of his rifle back to load another bullet into the chamber, Pete fired a round into the Nazi's face.

Pete jumped into the trench, his rifled shouldered and aimed at the corridor in which the second Nazi had appeared, assuming that there were more. Farther along the trench, he noticed another corridor that branched left of his current position. Behind him, he could hear more mine explosions along with the sounds of human panting and boots on dirt as his comrades fell into the trench behind him. Pete looked behind him. The group he had charged the wall with had already been reduced to eight by the time they had crossed the first mine field, and now the group in the trench with him now had been reduced to five soldiers. Cpt. Collins and Pvt. Charleston had survived, much to Pete's relief.

"Move up!" Cpt. Collins roared from the back of the group. Pete along with another private with a Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) in hand advanced closer to the opening of the nearest corridor which branched out to the right. As they came closer to the corridor, the characteristic _BOOM! BOOM!_ sound of an anti-armor weapon became almost deafening. Pete looked at the other private and pulled out an Mk 2 fragmentation grenade. The private took the hint and took out his own frag and walked up so that he was right next to Pete and could throw his frag the same time Pete did. Pete held up a hand and counted down with his fingers. 5... 4... 3... 2... 1! Pete and the other private pulled the safety pin on their grenades and lobbed them into the corridor which was met with several Germans crying in terror, near simultaneous explosions, and then silence. Pete chanced a look around the corner and saw that the Germans guarding the AA weapons and the German operating it had been killed by either the initial explosions or the shrapnel thrown by the exploding grenades.

Then, from the corridor farther up, a German ran out of the corridor, his MP40 shouldered to fire. Before the Nazi could get a shot off, though, nearly every single soldier had unloaded a round or ten into the Kraut. The soldier next to Pete stood up as a flight of P51s flew overhead in pursuit of a lone Bandit. "Purty sight, ain't it?" the soldier asked the group in a think Southern drawl, indicating the flight of Mustangs.

Cpt. Collins stood up and motioned towards the dead German by the corridors. "A prettier sight is the rest of the invasion force making it onto the beach with all limbs attatched. Come on, we need to take out those pillboxes." He waved two soldiers behind him forward while the other three soldiers fell in behind him. One of the soldiers he had waved forward poked his head around the corner to take a peek at what lay ahead before pulling it back quickly to avoid getting a face-full of lead.

"MG42 on the other side, Cap'n! Jerry's behind some concrete wall and he's shootin' at us from a little hole. What should we do?" the soldier reported.

Cpt. Collins nodded in recognition and replied, "Try to toss a 'nade in there. If you don't here any screaming, open fire until you do!"

Though reluctant, the soldier compied, tossing an Mk2 frag around the wall, almost losing his hand in the process. Seconds, later an explosion was heard followed by a scream and then silence, excluding the sounds of machine guns firing into sand and distant artillery fire going off at random intervals. The soldier that had thrown the grenade looked around the corner again and reported, "All clear, Cap'n."

The entire body of soldiers then advanced, weapons at the ready. They walked down the corridor and saw the machine gun previously occupied by the dead Kraut. After turning the corner of the wall that provided the German cover, the group came upon a large room that appeared to be a supply room. Stepping over the German's corpse as his group started to spread out along the room, Pete saw that he was struck down by the shrapnel produced by the grenade. Cpt. Collins then noticed an attatched room that had a ladder leading up from it, and as he grew closer to it, the sound of machine gun fire grew louder and louder. He raised his hands so everyone in his unit could see and clenched his hand into the fist. Once he had gotten everyone's attention, he pointed at Pete and another private whom Pete recognized as a member of the 101st judging from the shoulder patch. "Nichols, Sanford, you're up with me. On my mark, prepare to launch frags up into the pillbox." Pete and the paratrooper reluctantly nodded, moving with Cpt. Collins until all three of them were bunched up closely together, grenades at the ready. "Mark!" At his command, Pete and Sanford threw their grenades into the machine gun nest along with the captain, and near simultaneous explosions rang along with near deafening screams of pain and death. Cpt. Collins then began to go up the ladder, ordering evreyone else to do the same.

When Pete reached the top of the stairs, followed shortyly by Sanford, he saw that the grenades they had lobbed had blown two Germans off their feet and another one was half way out the pillbox. Then, a bullet whizzed passed him, causing him to duck along with everyone else. "Kraut's to the right!" someone yelled as the three Germans occupying the pillbox to their immediate right began to fire at them. Then, as if God had answered his prayer, a Mustang flew over the pillbox trailing fire, causing some of the Germans to duck ever so slightly. Pete decided to capitalize on the situation, popping up from his cover behind a stretch of wall and firing his M1 at the exposed heads of the momentarily surprised Germans. Of the three that were there, two went down while the remaining German returned fire with his Kar98K. The bullet struck Pete in the arm, causing him to drop to the ground as blood beganto seep through his uniform. Next to him, Charleston returned fire to the German and when nothing came back to them, Pete assumed that Charleston had killed him.

"Hold on, buddy," Charleston murmered as he took out a med kit he had undoubtedly salvaged from some dead medic he had come across along the way. "It's not even that bad a hit," Pete's friend reassured as he wrapped a bandage around Pete's arm to stop the bleeding.

Pete looked out of the pillbox's opening as Charleston finished wrapping up his arm. When he got up, Pete leaned over the pillbox opening and smiled. He had made it. He smiled as one of the M1 Shermans that were supposed to have come to aid to help the invasion finally made it onto the beach, maybe a little too late, but better late then never. The tank rotated its turret and fired at an unseen pillbox. "'Bout time," Sanford murmered. The world's largest sea-borned invasion in history and he had made it. "This is gonna' be one Hell of a letter to go back home."


End file.
